A Cast of Characters

(this page will be revised with time)

		Assyrian, Aram Azazel "Az"
		Reporter for the student newspaper who reports under the name "Az". Overheard a conversation between the former University President, Dr. James Fabricante, and the Dean of Medicine, Dr. Thomas Blacksmith, in which they conspire to mis-appropriate funds.    The forename is derived from the Hebrew, “exalted”. The surname is, in part, a reference to Eugene Aram, an English philologist who, in literature, is depicted as torn between violence and visionary ideals. The middle name, Azazel, from Hebrew, “one whom God strengthens”, ironically, a fallen angel whom God banished to the desert.
		Bader, Joan
		Editor of the student newspaper.    The name is homage to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, The Honorable Ruth Joan Bader Ginsberg.
		Dr. Blacksmith, Thomas
		Dean of the Medical School. Conspired with former University President, Dr. James Fabricante, to misappropriate funds.    The name is homage to the characters of Thom Ferrier’s (Dr. Thomas Ferrier), comic strip, Shit Doctors. The initials T.B. play well, too, for a medical doctor in disrepute.
		Clement, Bertrand "BC"
		Married to Joscelyne Clement. A University benefactor and potential benefactor of the University Library.    The name is homage to Jean-Marie-Bernard Clément, one of history’s forgotten self-made men. A French philosophy teacher, critic and translator who launched a war of words against his better known contemporary, Voltaire.
		Clement, Joscelyne
		Come from naught and married to Bertrand Clement, a filthy rich University benefactor. Friend of Marie-Anne Twist.    The name is derived from that an up-market furniture store in the United Kingdom. It suggests a kind of reversal of fortunes.
		Coffee, Dominique Victoria
		Head University Librarian, hired by Dr. James Fabricante. Widely misunderstood, likely because she masks insecurity with an overwhelming need to control.    The forenames reflect these characteristics. The surname is homage to the one-time head librarian of a leading U.S. university library. Any similarity is a matter of coincidence. The surname, with a more archaic spelling, is derived from the Gaelic word, meaning “victorious in battle”. There is a definite redundancy in the name as a whole, something of a stutter.
		Condé-Vendôme, Louise
		Born, Louise Vendôme. Hyphenated her name upon marriage to mitigate her father's anger at the union. Mother of Philippe Condé-Vendôme.    The name is a perversion of that of Louis Joseph, the Duke of Vendôme, who married the daughter of the Prince of Condé.
		Condé-Vendôme, Philippe
		Personal Assistant to the University President, Dr. David Croeso.    The surname is a modern contrivance for Philippe I, the Duke d’Orléans.
		Condé-Vendôme, Philippe, Senior
		Born, Philippe Condé. Hyphenated his name upon marriage to a woman of higher state. Father of Philippe Condé-Vendôme.    The surname is a modern contrivance for Philippe I, the Duke d’Orléans.
		Co-Workers of Philippe Condé-Vendôme
		Common men who go by names like Bob, Tom, and Jake, representing an economy of thought.      You’ve got to love the fact that Bob reads correctly whether forward or backward — a nodding appreciation for the British “Yob”, meaning an anti-social young man. Yob is boy spelled backward.
		Dr. Croeso, David
		Also known as Daffyd Croeso, a Welsh immigrant who came to study and remained after. Acting University President. The only high-ranking University official not claimed by the scandal that ended the career of the former University President. Historian, by profession.    The English forename is translated from the Welsh. As a whole, Daffyd Croeso, literally means “welcome beloved”. The surname is an allusion to Robinson Crusoe.
		Croeso, Mitchell
		David's Dog. A character in his own right.    The name, Mitchell, is an English vernacular form of the name Michael, from the Hebrew, roughly meaning “Who is like God?” — a playful ruse: an incarnation of “God”, here in inverted spelling as a dog. (Another nodding tribute to the English “Yob”, meaning anti-social boy.)
		Dr. Fabricante, James
		The former University President. He resigned as the result of a scandal involving the misappropriation of funds. A dentist by training. Privately, insecure in his position as University President. Publicly, over-compensates as a result. Known among, despised by, students as "the mouth" and "the teeth" for his penchant to dictate to the student body.    The name is homage to a one-time university president at one of the USA largest universities. The surname is a translation.
		Fabricante, Jean-Anne
		Also known as Mrs. James Fabricante. Devoted wife and defender of the former University President. A plain-speaking woman who might have been a Tom-boy.    She no longer uses her maiden name, Besloten, from the Dutch word meaning “private”.
		Roberts, John
		Cartoonist for the student newspaper.    The name is homage to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, The Honorable John Roberts.
		Scalia, Tanya
		Lawyer for the student newspaper.    The name is homage to the U.S. Supreme Court Justice, The Honorable Antonin Scalia. When you need advice on potential libel, you want a very conservative lawyer.
		Tiraz, Johnny (Jani)
		Rare Books Librarian at the University Library. Continued use of the diminutive name, Johnny — Jani, in Czech, well into his professional life is inappropriate, but Johnny continues to use it because his father is named Jan, or, John as well. He will continue to use it until his father dies, as would be culturally appropriate to his Czech heritage.    On a brighter note, Mr. Tiraz can thank his lucky stars that he wasn't born to a Turkish family with that name.  It would then be spelled "Can", which people would pronounce as can rather than Jon. The surname is from the Czech for “colophon”; also from Arabic to describe an inscribed textile usually given or worn as an honor.
		Twist, Marie-Anne
		Personal assistant to the Head Librarian, Dominique Victoria Coffee. Friend of Joscelyne Clement.    The name is derived from the Ukrainian word for “blossom”.  Marie-Anne is a blossom.
		Vendôme, Jean-Claude
		Uncle of Philippe Condé-Vendôme. Killed in the second World War.    The name? Why, simply because I love his YouTube video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzxkNfOrYXY

(vignette 13) Mortadella

Mortadella!  . . .

Mortadella; Mitchell heard the word correctly as the scent of the fresh cut meat tore him from his sleep.  His Italian was awful, but there was no mistaking the scent of Italian sausage.  Mitchell’s mouth began to water.

Mor • ta • del • la!   David Croeso spoke the word as if frolicking across a dale.  Its syllables rose then fell, and rose then fell again.  Mitchell could be forgiven if he initially thought that David might have been turning them in his mouth, as if morsels of the meat that he was cutting.  The word had a simple poetry about it.  A music, Mitchell thought.  Mortadella.  Mortadella, men have named you.  He hummed the tune of Nat King Cole’s Mona Lisa to himself.

The scents of toast and cornichons were also on the air when David began reciting a second verse with the staccato of the first.  Mot • za • rel • la.  — Mozzarella!  Mozzarella.  Mozzarella!  David sang in time to the sound of his knife landing on the cutting board as if to say Cutting!  Cutting.  Cutting!  — Perhaps a bit too staccato, Mitchell said to himself of his translation from the Italian, mozzarella, to the English, cutting.  He wondered if David was thinking the same thing.  The two of them often did.  Think the same thing, that is.  At the moment, Mitchell had begun to think that David might soon give him his own sampling of mozzarella con mortadella.  Anticipation was over-spilling his gums. 

The scents of fresh cut basil and sundried tomatoes crept up as well.  They, like characters from a tragic opera.  The young royal and the upstart commoner.  The latter wise beyond her years.  Drawn together.  Yet, meant to be kept apart.  Mitchell’s olfactory acuity, bordering on hyperosmia, usually expressed itself as euphoria, . . . with a great deal of fanciful visualization.  Even so, Mitchell was wise to the fact that David was happy, possibly ecstatic, about something.  Something, other than a lunch of mozzarella con mortadella.  These were symptoms of his happiness, not of its cause.  It would be a bit odd, . . .  David, to be feared, if his Italian gave away the cause of his happiness.  Mitchell was translating the word mozzarella using an archaic meaning, cutting.  And, presuming meaning hidden behind similar archaic use, Mitchell translated the word mortadella a bit too, … well, too literally to be certain, but also a bit too sinisterly.

Mortadella?  Mitchell lingered over the word.  Morta — della!  The two Italian words rolled around like rueful imps inside his brain.  Egli è morto della malattia profonda.  They repeated.  Morto — della — malattia — profonda.  “He has died of a major illness.”  Surely, David was not among the living dead.  The living dead didn’t make themselves cheese and meat platters.  They preferred living brain matter and blood-thumping human flesh.  But, who was dead, then?  And, how had they died?  These were the questions that Mitchell was left with.  Perhaps the answers lay in David’s choice of condiments.  Why ruin a quintessentially Italian platter with something as English as toast and as French as cornichons?  David couldn’t be pregnant?  Could he?  A croque-monsieur and a Monte Cristo sandwich also suggested themselves to Mitchell.  These might possibly involve the use of toast and cornichons.  But, the more he thought about these, the more he considered death and revenge as the motives for David’s happiness.  Mitchell’s French was worse than his Italian — virtually non-existent, in fact.  Had David next barked the words Eh, viola. Croak monsieur!, Mitchell would have to have considered that a stitch of Voodoo was being preformed.  It wasn’t in David’s character to wish someone dead, particularly not through the medium of a cheese and meat sandwich with pickles.  Revenge — the thought that sprung from a Monte Cristo — something to do with the movie perhaps — wasn’t in David’s character either.

As I’ve said, Mitchell was translating too literally.  We can forgive him.  He is only a dog, after all.  A truer etymology is unimportant here.  Unless.  —  No.  That would be preposterous.  Indeed.  Besides, in a strange way, David Croeso was happy just because there had been a kind of death.  The President’s.  A kind of political and fiscal suicide that left David Croeso, as the next highest ranking official not involved in the “well-intentioned” plot to misappropriate funds, as acting-University President.

     

     

(vignette 12) Of Nano-tubes and Pipe-dreams

The air in the cabin was electric.  Electric, not to feign the fey exuberance of Walt Whitman singing to the grass, though that might follow if only the flight was longer and the drinks were stronger.  No, it was electric in more of a good ol’ boy kind of way.  Dr. James Fabricante was still in his self-congratulatory mood.  And, he had a mind for slapping the backs of those he knew.  Frankly, on a mid-week, mid-day flight, he didn’t expect to see anyone he knew much less to find himself seated with the Dean of his Medical School, enjoying the flight.  It was more than a welcome relief.  You never know who you might end up with on one of these flights, Dr. Fabricante heard himself say.  Air travel had become democratic.  The University was literally in the middle of nowhere.  There was a highway that rolled out — one-and-a-half hours, top speed — to the coast.  The city at the other end of the highway was full of bankers and military men.  And, there was this five-times-daily flight to the big city up north.  There, connections could be made to the nation and the world at large.

It was true that seating on these flights was random.  My son, the Dean droned over the sound of the propellers, took the late morning flight last week.  He ended up sitting next to an opera singer who had been in town for “La Traviatta”.  “La Traviatta” was the perfect opera for a college audience, they both agreed, though both men thought only a handful of students likely filled the seats.  Neither of the two, themselves, had attended.  The boy tried to pretend that he was Russian, the Dean offered with a laugh.  — Russian!  Dr. Fabricante repeated.  He might have expected French or Spanish, something common.  But, Russian?  Russian takes dedication, he said.  — Awh, the boy’s a polyglot.  The Dean replied, to both acknowledge and dismiss any approval for his part in the fact.  Apparently, not good enough to put off an opera singer though.  The fellow engaged him Russian. the Dean continued.  Didn’t improve the conversation much, to hear the boy tell it.  — Well, Dr. Fabricante leaned closer to the Dean, I’m glad that you’re seated here.  — Me too, the Dean shot back, perhaps a bit too quickly.  Dr. Fabricante, his boss, was still new enough at the University that the Dean was nervous.  Me too.  I mean, he caught himself, though not soon enough, the man was the size of an opera singer; and, the poor boy was pinned in the window seat!  — Now, Dr. Fabricante laughed.  A conventional laugh.

With male-bonding rituals ticked from their lists, the two began talking shop.  It came naturally enough, and, saved them further awkward silences, or, the discomfort of yet more personal banter.  The plane rocked gently as it passed through pockets of turbulence, but it was altogether a smooth flight.

Dr. Fabricante would eventually come to know the reputation of the mid-week, mid-day flights.  They would become endless, ironically enough; Dr. Fabricante’s efficiency measures introduced wide-reaching cuts in travel budgets.  The flights had grown the reputation of “administrative specials”.  No one on an average fixed salary could afford to fly them.  It was odd then that a young man was seated in the row ahead of him; but it was easily dismissed.  The kid had, as students do, likely awoken too late for his scheduled flight.  The airline would have placed him on this flight, to fill an otherwise empty seat.  The kid was quiet, respectful, and — as students go — relatively well dressed.  Judging by any number of facts in evidence — that his shirt, a button-down Oxford, was tucked in at the waist — that his shoes were black leather rather than canvas or white — that his ears weren’t cuffed into ear-buds, listening to something god-awful — Dr. Fabricante presumed that the kid was a Campus Conservative.  The smooth rub of foundation for men, a bronzer perhaps, suggested that he might even have parked his sports car in the priority spaces next to Dr. Fabricante’s own well-polished saloon car.  For a moment, Dr. Fabricante thought what it might have been like to have had money like that when he was a student.  Any girl — not that he wasn’t happy with Jean-Anne — might have been his.

The kid went by the name of Aram Assyrian.  Name aside, he was the kind of young man who could fly under the radar.  His common good looks made people trust him.  He made the perfect spy, paid by the student newspaper as one of Dr. Fabricante’s several shadows.  His dress that day was just a uniform, tailored to fit in to the President’s background.  Aram couldn’t believe his good fortune.  Dr. Fabricante and the Dean of Medicine, both.  A captive core of actors, within easy hearing.  And, not just their banal thoughts on politics, small-talk about the wives and kids, or the quality of the student body.  It was as though they’d entered a world devoid of others, or, one in which they presumed that those whom their voices enveloped would neither understand nor care to understand a thing they had to say.  It wasn’t every day that a student reporter had access to a business meeting let alone to frank discussion and planning.

When his editor heard what he had to report, they agreed it was too explosive without further corroboration.  Instead Aram, who wrote under his middle name — Az, short for Azazel — had the pages of his story notarized, witnessed, and sealed in a envelop mailed, in triplicate, special-delivery to the Editor and the newspaper’s lawyer.  Once received, they would remain unopened, . . . until it became necessary to do so.  It was overkill to be certain.  But, the caution might one day work in their favor.  Sure enough, that day would come.  And, it came, along with denials from the President’s Office, in the newspaper’s Friday edition, at the start of “Legislative Weekend”.  Politicians found themselves arriving on campus as the ensuing scandal erupted.  It was awkward for everyone, especially Dr. Fabricante.  Denials from his Office had the whiff of attempted cover-up in the face of a direct witness statement and the newspaper’s documentation of how the plans made during that flight had been acted upon.  The cartoon that ran in the newspaper that day depicted a set of wind-up, jumping teeth with the caption, “Read my lips!”

If the plan hadn’t involved the misappropriation of legislated and donor funds and endowments, little would have been made of the story.  The premise of the plan overheard that day was simple: Support the development of nanotechnologies in the Medical Center at all costs, whatever the costs.  That alone didn’t invite curiosity let alone the Administration’s downfall.  Indeed, it was — in part — part and parcel of running a university.  The economic seed of the business of education was restricted and inadequate.  The University was forced to provide value-for-money that was bankrupting the institution.  Though less restricted, the value of a top-ranking athletics program in support of education was likewise finite and tapped.  Need was exceeding that for which athletics had already provided.  And, athletics as a source of supplemental funding appeared to be tapping-out, like an oil well going dry.  Alumni donors, another well of funding, were also closing their wallets in the face of tough times.  Contraction was the order of the day; but, the politicians would never stomach it.

University research needed to produce something tangible that could be ceded to the University’s Foundation and licensed, for profit, to keep the University competitive with its peer institutions nationally.  This much of the premise was sound.  Development and subsequent sale of a sports-drink brought millions of dollars to the University.  But, millions in today’s market was inadequate.  The University needed billions to secure the future.  And, sale of the product was terminal and short-sighted.  Licensing would ensure continued payments together with an ability to demand higher fees over time. 

For as simple and as certain was the case that could be made for his assertion, it was an assertion that could not be placed before the politicians and donors who allocated funds to the University.  If they understood it, they would only reduce their allocation by the amount of profit they anticipated.  Capitalism, Dr. Fabricante thought with disgust, had come this.  It no longer seeded growth without stripping it of its produce.  It was like selling all of your corn crop at market, retaining none for sowing the next year.  It wasn’t sustainable. 

Mrs. Fabricante had a more colorful analogy.  Why, she said when her husband ran his thoughts by his wife, that would be like sell’n your stud horse for dog food!  But, she continued, you can’t tell the Governor that.  The Governor, everyone knew, was a man who suspected disloyalties of educated men, of anyone really who wasn’t — as he described himself in his campaign literature — “self-made”.  Who was it, she asked her husband, who recently said that “Universities should focus on enterprises and integrate production, teaching and research; to capitalize on the intellectual property that they create”?  Dr. Fabricante had long suspected that his wife hung on his every word.  But, it was certain that she wasn’t paraphrasing him.  Neither he nor she for that matter would have been so direct.  Dr. Fabricante reeled through his memory of the Governor’s speeches.  I give up, he replied.  Communist Chinese Premier When Jowl-Bow!  Her accent made clear that she wasn’t mastering Chinese in her free time, but mention of Wen Jiabao made plain that his was a concept that would be foreign, to say the least, if planted into the Governor’s ears.  Dr. Fabricante knew, as he’d always known, that he’d have to be creative with what he had.

Nanotechnologies had a promising future, particularly in medicine.  But, they were also developmental and untested.  They were as voracious of funding as the returns they promised.  To see them through, the University would have to bet the farm, as Dr. Fabricante was overheard telling the Dean of Medicine.  That would mean using the economy as a reason to close programs, to shift funds.  Programs in the arts and humanities, the two men reasoned, had the lowest rates of demonstrated success, producing useful products and intellectual property for which people would pay.  What was the English program capable of producing?  The Dean asked rhetorically.  The one or two authors internationally who might gain fame every decade weren’t exactly buying Caribbean isles or castles in Scotland.  Even when they donated to educational institutions, they were more burden than blessing.  They saddled university libraries with their papers, Az reported overhearing Dr. Fabricante, . . . papers, so valued culturally, that they couldn’t be sold on, not even for the up-keep of more important papers. 

The graduates of these programs, Dr. Fabricante elaborated, weren’t providing donations in sufficient numbers, let alone to the level of funding required to sustain the programs from which they’d graduated.  This was a lament that the newspaper had often previously reported from the President’s Office.  At least some of the social sciences tapped into lucrative anti-terrorist and drug-war grants.  And, Az reported, paraphrasing, while the university’s scientists were by and large studying esoteric and useless subjects, such as paleo-climatology, those few that tapped into commercial services were returning value to recover the running costs of their entire programs.  The loss of certain popular romance language programs, such as French or Spanish, would be acceptable.  They were being taught elsewhere.  People would always need health-care; and, they’d demonstrated time and again the willingness to pay hand over fist for new and life-prolonging medical technologies.  Dr. Fabricante described the closure of “invaluable programs” as a “bridge loan”.  The phrase invaluable programs was characteristic of Dr. Fabricante’s humor.  The Dean gave it an appropriate, knowing laugh.

   

(vignette 11) Post-Mortem: an obduction in the family

TV drama, the Ex-President's wife thought, was after-all little more than a day-time soap with better production values.  Jean-Anne seemed to be in shock.  Jim had expected shock.  Yet, her response to his question wasn't what he'd expected.  The question, itself, had been straight-forward and, perhaps, a bit too simple.  How are you feeling? he'd asked.  

Jean-Anne hadn't been immediately aware that she'd answered in voice what her mind had spoken.  But, no sooner than she had, she'd resolved to henceforward pride herself on speaking her mind.  Doing so had left Jim visibly puzzled.  This is good! she remarked the more mindfully to herself alone.  Puzzlement was a face that Jim had pulled only, anymore, at tax-time.  It once had been hers and hers only long ago, as he struggled to learn how to make her laugh.  Jean-Anne recalled telling her mother about his "curious George" face sometime into their early courtship.  Her mother, relieved to gather that this wasn't a mother-daughter conversation about you-know-what, the birds and the bees she might have said, or, your wedding night as her mother before her would have said.    . . . Well, her mother told her, a young man should learn to make a young woman laugh.  Jean-Anne was at once comforted with thoughts of her mother, but torn apart by that thought that Jim had stopped learning to make her laugh.  Heck, she thought, now that it was his hour of need, about me at all!  She'd never ask anything of him at all.    She chided herself.  Maybe now was the time to change all that.

Altogether, this moment or two or thought felt as though it had been passed in an eternity.  Memory has its way about it, her mother used to say.  This, no doubt, was a day that she and Jim would remember forever.  It was the day, Jim's career as University President took a nose dive.

Her response to his question caused his face to wrinkle up.  Better explain, she instructed herself, before it rolls up into a ball.  One of her favorite evening TV dramas was a British show about an intelligence agency.  Spooks! Jean-Ann said.  She knew that the one word would signal that she wasn't out in space, though it would momentarily position her in left field waiting for a pop-up ball to fall.  What? he asked, reeling through his mind, hoping to snare the reference.  It was like catching your partner's bait fish.  He didn't want, particularly, to eat it.  Jim could never watch the program.  He claimed to be busy when it was broadcast.  In fact, because America had been painted too frequently in a rather jaundiced light, he felt he couldn't watch it.  He didn't want to feel that Britons were ungrateful for America's WW2 blood and treasure at a time when America needed what Britain had in the War Against Terrorism.   Jean-Ann knew how Jim felt, but a good metaphor's a good metaphor she told herself.

At least once a season, one of the good guys would get killed.  That kind of thing didn't happen in American TV drama.  James Arness played Matt Dillon in Gunsmoke clear through, from 1955 through 1975.  Twenty years was longer than many marriages these days.  And, not one of the main characters bit the dust.  It seemed fitting, to Jean-Anne, that in real-life situations, characters could really die.  She was aware, still aggrieved that her husband had stopped puzzling her through, that explaining this to Jim was taking the long way round.  Still, she pressed on.  In your average soap-opera, a character could be expected to depart the show after a long and confounded illness.  She was trying to tell Jim that "Sometimes bad things happen to good people."  She was trying to tell him that he was a good person, and, that this had come upon him quickly.  — But, she wasn't sure either that he'd heard her, or, needed her confirmation.

 

(vignette 10) Dominion!

Few of Marie-Anne’s friends knew where she lived.  Only one, Joscelyne Clement, had ever been inside.  Joscelyne thought of herself as a fashionista.  She prided herself on knowing what was in vogue.  Her own home was like a train station.  Out went the old as soon as the new had come to market.  She spent a fortune keeping current.  And, if her furnishings were sparse, it was only because she could not afford more.  Fortunately for Joscelyne, she was married to one of the University’s benefactors, a banker who had come into his own trading on unregulated markets in oil, natural gas and soya beans.  When they got hitched, Joscelyne’s mother reached forward to Marie-Anne, a maid-of-honour, as the bride was processing down the aisle, and, quipped, Honey. Today we’re gonna marry looks to money. My grandkids are gonna be rulers of the world!  Joscelyne, who’d been born Jolene after the Dolly Parton song, had had looks and not a stitch of money.  But, Lord, did B.C. — Bertrand Clement — ever have money.  Joscelyne took to it, as her mother said, like a fish outta water.  B.C. didn’t seem to mind.  A trophy wife was like holding an Oscar at the After-Parties.  It was trite, but they were made for one another.


Marie-Anne was delighted to find her old friend, Jolly, as she had been known in childhood, in the office where she worked as Dominique’s personal assistant.  B.C. was contemplating a gift to the University Library that would have put it on the map.  Millions!  Jolly had accompanied B.C. to his meeting with Dominique, the Head Librarian.  The deal was quashed not because Dominique didn’t know how to sell it.  Indeed, she understood B.C.’s type perfectly and couched her every move and sentence in terms that he would understand and appreciate.  With B.C.’s departure, Dominique was certain that she’d clenched the deal.  It was after the meeting that the deal fell apart.


Joscelyne, begging her goodbyes from B.C., followed Marie-Anne on her break to the Starbucks downstairs.   Why is it, Jolly asked, Head Librarians always have their offices in penthouse suites?  Marie-Anne laughed.  She’d never considered the question before.  They don’t all sit in Ivory Towers, Marie-Anne answered.  The chief of the Public Library, downtown, has her office on the ground floor.  ... Clearly accessible to the public.  Her response inadvertently seeded Jolly’s reservations.  She didn’t trust women who seemed as much man as the man she’d married.  It was, even so, a reservation that Joscelyne didn’t, herself, trust.  What have you been up to?, she asked, adding quickly, What’s it like, ... working as Dominique’s P.A.?   Perhaps it was the caffeine rush of her triple-shot latté speaking, but Marie-Anne found herself speaking freely.  It was something that Marie-Anne would later regret.  P.A.?  Marie-Anne remarked, Oh, I wouldn’t dare speak for Dominique!  Jolly looked puzzled.  Public address system.  — P.A.


Regardless whatever had unleashed her workplace reserve; Marie-Anne sensed, it needed to be caged.  As she later replayed the conversation in her mind, she heard herself telling Jolly that she preferred the term “secretary”.   ... Personal Assistant makes me think of bound servitude.  Marie-Anne’s face muscles, she recalled, gave truth to the statement.  She also recalled that, as Joscelyne probed deeper, she said, Dominique is aptly named.  Marie-Anne’s meaning, intended or not, was clear.  Joscelyne later reported to B.C. as she had it, from an excellent source, that The staff of that library fear the Head Librarian.  Without revealing her source or remarking on Marie-Anne’s personal feelings, she’d go on to recount statistics: Ninety percent of her assistant heads and middle managers had left the library abruptly.  — Two had been fired unceremoniously, with indecorous all-staff email from the Head following them to the door.  — Productivity, as reflected in donor income and grants awarded had fallen sharply, by more than 50% in the last year.   As she continued her litany of facts copied from Marie-Anne’s smart-phone, B.C. could hardly believe that a library could be so stressful; yet, he’d come to trust Joscelyne.  He called the new University President that evening and, without saying why, rescinded his offer of thirty-six million dollars.


The news was delivered personally by the President the next morning.  He’d intended the visit to soothe Dominique’s potential concerns.  They spoke at length.  The President, certain he’d conveyed that the donation was rescinded without malice.  To the contrary, his visit inflamed her.  The former President never came over here!  she told her new assistant heads immediately after the visit, demanding they get to the bottom of “this”.  Dominique took his visit as a signal that he wanted her head.  She was wracked by paranoia, the feeling that she’d been “betrayed”.  She knew that she’d need to offer something up.  Something BIG.

    

   

(vignette 9) Fame & the Torture of Thought

Why is it that when offered a penny for your thoughts, we often give two cents worth in return?  Do we think more of ourselves than others think of us?  Is our stock value appreciating?  In 1968, Andy Warhol offered, in an exhibit catalogue, that each of us would claim fifteen minutes of fame.  In 1909, however, E. M. Forster granted us a mere ten minutes of fame.

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What Johnny said was not well translated into English, even though he spoke in English. Consequently, he often kept his thoughts to himself.  The world he knew was beautifully simple.  Language had a difficult time containing it.  Language yearned to be expansive.  Painting vignettes in phrases meant to evoke brush strokes that, in themselves, were meant to capture light and darkness, movement and stillness, moments of birth and of death or of less monumental, the more mundane seconds of lives . . . well, it seemed to lay beyond his mastery of simplicity.  — A cloud of algae swimming off the coast of Matagorda Island, for example; its blue-green mass, never the same form from moment to moment, effervescing oxygen: it could not be rendered in words. —   He lacked the power to make them wholly real.  In comparison to the thing itself, they would be mud men.  And, though they might do his bidding, they would sink in the real world.

Besides, he told himself, the canvas that lay between two minds, ...   well, it required a common understanding, if not common sense. Johnny didn’t believe it existed.  It was like painting on water, like suminagashi, the Japanese art of ‘floating ink’ to marble papers.  If it were possible, no two papers were alike.  But, it was worse than that in his mind.  Philosophies and metaphysics almost literally drew words upon words.  Words, themselves, relied upon themselves, almost solipsistically, like the dialogue of two facing mirrors.  Words were randy bastards that copulated when brought together and masturbated when left alone.  Johnny’s mind was a brush filled with words spilling out.  It was Contagion that he dared not let loose.

Still — In moments like these — Dominique bearing down upon him — He used his thoughts as Diversion.  With them, he could make time stand still.  He could draw out moments into eternities, singularities, as the fellows of the University’s Physics Department might say.  Her pressure tactics were sufficiently intense; he felt himself flattened before her.  How much longer, he wondered, could he ignore her?

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This theory of fame, his mind hammered away, was just a theory, taken in sixty-eight year segments.  If correct, the common man enjoyed no fame at all before 1705.  This much of the theory might well be true.  It was at about that time that newspaper publishing as we know it — knew it, anyway — came into being.  In 1704, the Boston News-Letter was granted a license.  Skip forward, two-hundred and sixty-three years or so; and, the Pelican Rapids Press, as every other small-town newspaper, was making everyone’s business known.  If correct, each of us individually now has a claim of approximately eighteen minutes on fame.     — Johnny was talking to himself.  Eighteen minutes was an answer to his question.  But, eighteen minutes seemed a long time to ignore anyone, let alone to ignore Dominique. —     If correct, it’s probably eighteen minutes in total, summed up in the read-life of a Twitter stream, or, Facebook feed, or, the moments of lucidity afforded our shortening attention span. 

As a theory, though, it’s almost certainly wrong.     — This ability to argue against himself made Johnny his own best opponent in games of chess. —     Economies of so-much-more-to-do in ever less time and for less and less pay, . . . well, they dictate: The theory is hokum!  Even the choice of the word, ‘hokum’ — contraction of the words hocus-pocus and bunkum, LOL — stands as a proof contra-theorem.

Forster saw it coming.     — Johnny was certain of this. —     His short story — short story, indeed — The Machine Stops predicted the fall of social media, the last line of communication, the likes of Twitter, Google+ and the Facebook Wall, even their foreign counterparts, like Baidu.  Forster’s machine stops something like a wind-up clock, like the old ticker that granny bequeathed you in her last-will-and-testament.  That old girl, the old ticker, the antique clock — the one given a stately place on the mantle — it’s fire too, gone out, made redundant, Johnny remarked to himself on the irony of it — it has needs that you keep forgetting to attend to.     — Wind her up! Johnny instructed himself.  Hadn’t that been what he had done with Dominique? —     Warhol, all things considered, was an anomaly.     — He was certainly Johnny’s antithesis. —     Warhol, the attention seeker, could never be given enough recognition; he had to manufacture it for himself.  Self-made manufacture alone guaranteed that fame would be received in the measure required.  It’s surprising that five minutes more fame, alone, sufficed.

In the theory’s contrapositive, then, ...     In the reduction of fame over time, its apogee will be the simple greeting, “Yo!” or “Word”.  No other words will be needed.  Indeed, it’s already becoming so difficult to tell, really, what one means when one is talking.  Appoggiatura — explaining oneself — will lack economy.     — Here, he excused himself for terminating further conversation with Dominique.  It wasn’t much of a conversation anyway. Dominique issued commands.  She didn't expect to be spoken back to, even though most people called that 'normal conversation'. —     No need to polish the penny, Johnny instructed himself, when a dull one, and only one, need do.

Well?  He heard Dominique demand.  He knew that he would be thrown down a well in the morning.  She was his boss, after all.  And, if wolves were to be found down there, he knew they’d be biting his ass.  For now, snapping to, he responded, Benim Adım Kırmızı!  “My Name is Red!”    ... Dominique simply huffed, her exasperation audible, and, turning with her black humour intact, left.  She hadn’t understood a word he said.  Of course, this time, he was speaking Turkish.

    

     

(vignette 8) The Eye of the Beholder

   

That night, after luxuriating in her bath, Marie-Anne penned fresh words, following the date and day of the week, into her diary.

Oh, beautiful.  The bright blue

skies.  My ocean's waters.

You hold me, embrace me

who dares to breathe you

in and out. Oh, beautiful.

Oh, beautiful.  Lolling fields

to bed me, lay me down

beside nettled fences, yielding

to lamp-light, at last

returning.  Eternal.  Beautiful.

Oh, beautiful.  The late trains

call with their clip and clatter

of coming and going.  The rain

of sound falling at  the speed

of light.  So lovely.  So beautiful.

Oh, so beautiful.  The waves’

crescent gestures ordain

rounds of loss and urge return

of those they wish well.

Goodnight.  Dearest.  Beautiful.

   

It was a wonder that Marie-Anne hadn’t accidentally drowned, such was her preoccupation with the President’s body as she lay, eyes closed, in her bath.  Gently rocking.  Pelvis thrusting.  Attendant waves lapping at her breasts.  Envisioning acts unseemly had they not evoked shared intimacy.

Now, she lay in bed wondering how she would ever find sleep.  Until this moment she’d never thought how archaic was her language.  Sleep, after all, wasn’t the sort of thing one found, like a lost button or a coin in the cushions of the couch after a party.  It was her nagging thought that just as she might never truly find sleep, she might never truly know the President’s body.  Oh, he was gorgeous, indeed!

Marie-Anne had reached early middle age unmarried.  It was of no fault of her own, and, certainly not because she was comely.  Indeed, while Marie-Anne had been rotund as a child, she’d grown into a glamorous young woman.  She carried this beauty with her into middle age, touched by the humility of one who could count her blessings in lost pounds.  No, the cause was, in a sense, thoroughly common, ... if a bit old-world.  Marie-Anne’s mother fell ill and infirmed when Marie-Anne was still young.  Attending to her widower mother’s needs as an only-child effectively took her off the market. 

Oh, there was an older brother; but, he was a bit of a miscreant, a reprobate who’d gone to jail for a series of felony thefts.  Under new “Three Strikes” law, he’d eventually gone away for good.  He was put down like a rabid dawg, their mother used to say of him, never failing not to speak his name.  He was little more than a footnote on Marie-Anne’s life now.  She thought of him as “miscarried”, the brother she never had.

She might have said the same of her father.  He’d gone to war and come back a shell-shocked wreck of the man her mother had known.  At first, after he’d come back, he’d drink himself into altered states.  These often left the impression that she was living in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.  To secure her own peace of mind, Marie-Anne would ultimately spend most of her early childhood evenings locked away in her room.  She reasoned this was why she had been fat as a child.  Cooped up with enough food to last her into an eternity, she’d finish her homework then spend the night inactively watching TV.  It struck her that she had the life of one of the hens on the farm where her family lived, in a form of captive husbandry.  In the end, her father became prophetic.  If I don’t wake, just bury me here, were his final words.  He was speaking of the floor, where he’d often pass his evenings, prone, beside an empty bottle.  When he died, they buried him behind the out-house, said some words, and sold the farm.  That’s what brought Marie-Anne from up-north, on the rolling countryside of Clyde, to this sleepy little university town.

It was of no matter to Marie-Anne that she remained unmarried now, even after her mother’s late demise.  It wasn’t the dead-end that her friends suggested it should be.  Rather, it marked opportunity.  — Now, don't you let opportunity fly out the window, she remembered her grandpa advising her.  Marie-Anne wasn't going to spend it on the first man that walked by, no matter what her friends thought. —  She was single, not alone.  She could turn heads.  Walk down the street, and, the eyes of every man would be upon her.  Some, so single-minded in their attentions, she thought of them as the walking dead.  One once even drove his car into the back of another that had slowed to give her what her mother called “googly-eyes”.


Strange, she stopped to amuse herself, how in the age of the search-engine that term had been given new life.  She was thinking of the hot married man who told her, Child. I’m gonna look you up!  If he weren’t married, she would have encouraged him with a smile.     ... and, the young fellow she’d passed inside the Country-and-Western bar she that visited for line-dancing lessons with her friends.  He had the annoying habit of saying Bing!, as if she was ringing his bell, whenever she came within “shout’n distance”.  Her friend, Joscelyne Clement, called this his Yahoo! moments.  Joscelyne said this to imply that he was a country bumpkin.  As she looked back on it now in the context of ‘the new age’, Marie-Anne allowed herself to think of the brutes of Gulliver’s Travels rather than the wits of an intelligent search engine.

No, Marie-Anne was not single because she was comely or especially smart, but, because she was saving herself.  Not particularly for the right man, for Mr. Right as Joscelyne named this unknown soldier.  No.  Just, saving herself.  It was what she’d always done and, likely, always would do.  The President was safe.  She could dream of him, or, lay awake thinking about him.    ... Imagine making love to him in the surf on far-flung Caribbean beaches.    ... Write love poems, that were heartfelt if not terribly good, about him.  She could venerate him.     ... but, she could never have him, and never would.  He was safe.  Even Botticelli, had to paint Mars to see Venus.  She understood, it was the pursuit that made her happy.